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CU regents Merchant, Sharkey, Neguse on School of Journalism closure

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Posted:
04/14/2011 02:31:33 PM MDT

Updated:
04/14/2011 02:35:12 PM MDT

Editor's Note: University of Colorado regents Monisha Merchant, D-Lakewood; Sue Sharkey, R-Windsor; and Joe Neguse, D-Boulder; wrote this open letter explaining why they voted against a resolution to close the School of Journalism and Mass Communication on the Boulder campus, as CU President Bruce Benson and campus leaders had recommended. Jim Geddes, R-Sedalia, also voted against the closure.

The regents this afternoon voted 5-4 to close the school, effective June 30.

We chose not to support the recommendation from President Benson, because we felt strongly that a formal "program discontinuance" or structural change was not required to meet the changing dynamics of the journalism profession.

According to the School's website, journalism instruction has existed on the Boulder campus for over 100 years, beginning in 1908. In 1962, decades before many of its countless future students were born, the Board of Regents authorized the creation of the School of Journalism.

For 49 years-nearly half a century-the School has provided a quality and first-rate education to generations of journalists across the State of Colorado and our great Nation. Simply put, it has stood the test of time, and though it may be ripe for improvement, closing the School itself for "strategic alignment" purposes was undoubtedly a drastic option.

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Discontinuing an academic program of the School's stature is a serious matter. We laud the efforts of Chancellor DiStefano and the volunteers who served on the Journalism Task Force. The open meetings provided an opportunity for the public to express their diverse viewpoints on what they expect from the field of journalism. However, after careful deliberation, we concluded that while the School has room for improvement, it should not be closed.

Make no mistake, "discontinuance" means closure. The Board of Regents was not being asked to authorize a new school that would presumably "align" journalism education with other important disciplines. We were not being asked to create a new "School of Information, Communication, and Media Technology" as described by Provost Moore's ICT committee, nor were we being asked to effectuate the recommendation of the Journalism School's Advisory Board to consolidate the School's curriculum with ATLAS as a "College of News, Information, and Technology." Both proposals were good ones-and had they been before the Board of Regents, perhaps we'd have voted differently.

Unfortunately, they were not. We were instead asked to close the School. As a result of today's vote, the journalism program will no longer be a stand-alone school, but rather, will be housed in the Graduate School on an impermanent basis for an unknown period of time. Thus, the future of CU-Boulder's journalism education, beyond the President's promise that it will continue, is unclear. We commend Chancellor DiStefano, Provost Moore, and the advisory committee for their hard work and commitment to an open, transparent process. However, we simply could not support a road-map that does not tell us (or the students at CU) where we're all going.

Many cited other reasons to close the School of Journalism beyond so-called "strategic realignment." For example, we were told that journalism education should be more practical and involve more experienced professionals in the journalism world. Yet the School's website reveals more than 30 adjunct professors, including editors, reporters, and photographers at some of the Nation's leading publications. Likewise, some told us that journalism education needs to be more rigorous. Hence, the proposed Journalism Plus program will now require students to obtain a dual degree in another field. Whether the idea made sense or not, there is little doubt that few other degrees on the Boulder campus have such a requirement. And while requiring a dual degree and increasing the credit hour requirement were ideas worth pursuing, they were not reason enough to completely shut down the School of Journalism.

In short, we agreed that increasing the credit hour requirement would make the journalism education a more rigorous one. We agreed that requiring students to obtain a dual degree in another major would do the same.

What we did not understand, however, is why we needed to close the School of Journalism to do so.

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